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Re: I'd like to know the logic.

Thank you for bearing with me and my circuitous route to the answer.

What I was pointing out was that neither 'that' nor 'which' can be simply slotted in - you had to substitute 'in which', not 'which'.
Why?
What part of speech is 'that' in:I read (in) the news that a dog killed a man.

What part of speech is required in the sentence: The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon _____curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky.

and a hint:
The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon ____ curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky

Re: I'd like to know the logic.

Start of a brand new day.(The preliminary discussion below may be elementary to you, but I am conscious that beginners may also be trying to follow our discussion, and I want to take it logically in steps.)

Take these two sentences:He is a good teacher.Effective strategies for classroom discipline are the envy and wish of every new teacher.

Now let’s put them together:Mary said, “He is a good teacher. Effective strategies for classroom discipline are the envy and wish of every new teacher.”

Can you see that the two sentences are disjointed – there is a jump from talking about how someone is a good a teacher, to talking about strategies/classroom discipline.
However, we can show a relationship between the two sentences if we change it to:“He is a good teacher. His effective strategies for classroom discipline are the envy and wish of every new teacher.”
Now, the second sentence specifically adds more information about a way in which he is a good teacher.

We could also combine the two sentences, making one the main clause, and the other sentence into a Relative Clause**
** (these either define the ‘who’ or ‘what’ mentioned in the first sentence more specifically; or add more information.)

We combine sentence like this with Relative Pronouns:
“that’, ‘which’, ‘who’, ‘whom’, and ‘whose’
These Relative Pronouns do two things:
1. as pronouns, they refer to somebody or something just mentioned
AND
2. they are conjunctions, because they join clauses together
So:He is a good teacher, whose effective strategies for classroom discipline are the envy and wish of every new teacher.

Note that because of the possessive pronoun ‘his’ in the second sentence, I needed to use the possessive determiner when I turned it into a relative clause. Note also that ‘whose’ can’t be used on its own, but always with a noun – here, ‘whose (effective) strategies’.

Now for your sentence:1. Curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky. 2. The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon.

I’ve started by making the information into two valid sentences; and more, they could be un-related:“The New Years firework display over Sydney Harbour Bridge is as spectacular as ever. Great cloudbursts of colour blanket the harbour sky, and as the bursts now shower to the water below, fading, curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky for miles around.”

If we put the two parts together:The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon. Curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky.

Again, the two are slightly disjointed, and the sentences flow better if I write:The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon. Its curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky.
So – when I combine these into a main clause, and a relative clause, I must again use the possessive determiner:The Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon whose curtains of faint and shimmering light are visible in the night sky.

I cannot use “that’, ‘which’, ‘who’, or ‘whom’ on its own (as you found!). However, we can use ‘which’ after a preposition to represent a specified antecedent:The house in which I live.“…phenomenon, in which curtains of faint and…”

(To use ‘in that’ would introduce a different meaning, because ‘in that’ is defining what a phenomenon is, whereas ‘curtains of light” specifically describes the Aurora Borealis.)

In your very first sentence:I read the news that a dog killed a man.
Here, ‘that’ is a conjunction, with the clause defining the actual ‘news’ – but there is no element of possession here, as in your Aurora Borealis sentence!

Re: I'd like to know the logic.

Thank you for your elaborate explanation, David L.

The fire work example you mentioned have made me understand the difference of the two sentences.
In the case of 2, 'that' is not acceptable because other things but Aurora Borealis can cause the phonemenon.